Feed, Starve, or Bury?: A New Way of Thinking About Movie Franchises

There are too many movie franchises. Here's a solution to the problem.

The summer movie season is just around the corner and, like summer movie seasons before, it’s set to be filled with sequels and series extensions. Like it or not, we remain in a blockbuster era dominated by franchises. Some seem vibrant. Others are animated only by the faintest spark of life. In a 2018 article about Men in Black: International, Tim Grierson coined the term “zombie franchise” to describe series that keep existing because they seemingly don’t know how to die and it’s stuck with me ever since. 

Perhaps what we need is a system of classification to separate the vital from the dead, a kind of franchise triage that carves out a separate category for those whose condition might improve with time. With apologies to a certain problematic sorting system, I’ve created just that. All franchises should be fed, starved, or buried. How does it work? Pretty simply.

Feed: These are franchises that are working, or working well enough. They still turn out notable movies. Their names do not inspire dread.

Starve: These franchises need to get hungry again. They’re stuck in ruts or seem too content to turn out more of the same. Their names inspire yawns and/or trepidation. They need to take a break until they decide they want to be great again.

Bury: These franchises should be put to rest forever. Not everything needs to take the form of sequels, prequels, reboots, and legacy-quels stretching off into infinity.

James Bond
Status: Active
Next Entry: TBD

Without getting too spoiler-y, things didn’t look so good for 007 at the end of No Time to Die, the long-delayed fifth and final entry starring Daniel Craig. But did anyone ever doubt that Bond would be back (even before the closing credits promised, yet again, “James Bond Will Return”)? The usual “Who will be the next Bond?” rumors have swirled ever since and though all signs suggest that Aaron Taylor-Johnson will be tapped for the role, nothing’s yet been made official.

Taylor-Johnson does not seem like the most inspired choice, but it’s always best to take a wait-and-see attitude with each new Bond. There have been good Bond movies and bad Bond movies, but their quality has never been defined by their lead. (Pierce Brosnan could have been grown in a lab to play Bond, but he arguably only got one truly decent Bond movie during his tenure, his first.) In fact, what will happen next seems pretty predictable: the first entry starring the new Bond will attempt to redefine the series, probably by attempting a more grounded, contemporary version of Bond, then subsequent entries will chip away at that definition, often by bringing in some of the sillier touches of previous films. (Even Craig ended his Bond tenure on a supervillain’s island lair.) Some will work. Some won’t. Then the whole cycle will repeat. Would you really want it any other way?

Verdict: Feed

The Wizarding World
Status: Dormant
Next Entry: N/A

After tolerance for the Fantastic Beasts series evaporated with the mostly pointless 2022 film Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Warner Bros. shifted its efforts to other media. On the gaming front, Hogwarts Legacy was a success and plans for a Harry Potter TV series seem to be rolling along, even if they still remain in the early stages. Let’s put aside creator J.K. Rowling’s segue from beloved author to full-time online transphobe for a moment and ask the central question: Does it feel like there’s a lot of juice left in this one? That the franchise’s next big move is to retell stories that already served as the source for a beloved film series suggests that the real appeal of the Wizarding World lies with Harry and his friends and the adventures found in the seven books in which they appear. Evanesco!

Verdict: Bury

Pirates of the Caribbean
Status: Dormant
Next Entry: N/A

Apart from whispers of a reboot with a younger cast and a spin-off starring Margot Robbie, things have been pretty quiet on the Pirates of the Caribbean front since its fifth entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in 2017. Have you missed it? Did you even remember there was a fifth film? Exactly.

Verdict: Bury (at sea)

Star Wars
Status: Active
Next Entry: The Mandalorian & Grogu

Star Wars provides the perfect example of what happens when you overfeed a film franchise. Fans held their breaths as they waited for the 2015 release of Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, the first new entry since Revenge of the Sith in 2005 and the first since creator George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney. That sound you heard on December 18th was a huge (if not universal) sigh of relief, thanks to a movie that respected the past while pushing the series forward. Then things took a turn. Lucasfilm’s plan to release a Star Wars every year, alternating standalone films with main series entries, seemed sound enough at first. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, rough edges and all, suggested an interest in expanding the boundaries of what Star Wars could do, as did Rian Johnson’s thrillingly unpredictable Star Wars: Episode VII — The Last Jedi. But Solo: A Star Wars Story didn’t quite work and Lucasfilm made the mistake of listening to the manufactured online outrage that greeted Johnson’s film before releasing Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker, a rushed, play-it-safe entry that satisfied no one and retroactively devalued the two trilogy films that preceded it, in 2019.